Hello mastodon!
I'm a German biologist, currently doing a #PhD in Functional Morphology at the University of Antwerp. I study the biomechanics of beak movement in songbirds. 🐦
I'm here to connect with other scientists, share some bits and pieces about my research, and hopefully meet some nice people that are also interested in #animals, #birds, #evolution, #biomechanics, and #opensource software.
That article about all #birds in North & South America having shrinking bodies & lengthening wings due to #ClimateChange is likely rapid #evolution in response to external stimuli - warming temps. Per the USAToday article, small bodies handle heat better; longer wings to keep migrating w/ less energy.
When local food is sparse, body size also shrinks. Longer wings = can search farther for food. Could be more than 1 reason & that one is a daily requirement - eating.
An unimpressive #sunrise on the U.S. #southern#EastCoast this morning. I fell asleep early, like 5 or 6 pm so I was up about 3 am, a good time for #Stargazing. I am not ready for the daylight. But the #NightSky was equally unimpressive this morning. The #clouds were so thick I couldn't see a single star. Even the #moon was obscured by clouds. I would love to live in one of the few places on Earth where the sun didn't shine for long periods of time. Can't wait for the sun to become a #RedGiant.
But until the sun becomes a #RedGiant, it is my hope that humans will go extinct soon (*in Earth years) so that the ecosystem can recover. Let the rest of life on #Earth survive, thrive, and #evolve without us, I say.
@mp362 The calendar applets in #Cinnamon and #GNOME will show me my appointments in #Evolution - a useful feature for a calendar, you know? I’d even include #Budgie on my list of it had that.
New review: A data-dense book full of outstanding skeletal reconstructions, The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles completes the informal trilogy.
Dropping #evolution from the science curriculum is like dropping arithmetic from mathematics curriculum. Very few things made sense to me in #biology until I learnt about evolution.
On top of that, this sort of nonsense was always something that happened in other countries. I'm very sad to see it reach #India.
All articles in the journal's new #JEB100 Special Issue, Century of Comparative Biomechanics: Emerging and Historical Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Field, are available for #Free
The "paradox of robustness" is that if the system evolves to tolerate failures in X, the expected effect over time is reduced performance of X,
e.g., develop RAID to tolerate hard-disk failures, and this just encourages the use of cheaper lower-performing disks
Or introduce chaperones to refold proteins after a heat-shock, and this opens an evolutionary door for proteins in general to lose intrinsic stability (even at normal temps)
Scientists at the DOE/Argonne National Laboratory say they've developed a new method for recycling high-density polyethylene (HDPE) into a fully recyclable and potentially biodegradable material that can be recycled repeatedly without loss of quality.
Humans only know two kinds of 'degrowth'. One is where one group kills another and burns their city to the ground, and the other is the one that mother nature deals out equally to all #systems, called '#collapse'.
IMO, the label of #degrowth is a poor choice. Nonetheless, the local strategies espoused are sound, as they provide the conditions needed for the #evolution of #sustainable models in the post-collapse #environment.
We are well into #overshoot, and more basic survival will soon be the only thing many will worry about. We will not see a single strategy consensus here, we'll see a chaotic blend of mostly ineffective measures, followed by the a return to many of the the old ways, which will unfortunately include a lot of violence, mass migration, etc.
A personal focus on making the necessary changes in life to become less dependent on extended connections, and more self-sufficient seems to be the best mindset.